How to

Grow Your Own

A man's introduction to gardening

We love the sustainable-food movement, we really do. It's made us healthier and more environmentally aware, and has brought fresher, brighter, tastier food to our kitchens and to the restaurants we love. What we regret: that lately, it's gone baroque. There's organic. And biodynamic. And zero-carbon-footprint. It's as if you're letting Mother Earth down if you don't have Michael Pollan's latest tucked under your arm each time you go to the greenmarket.

Which leads us to the purpose of this guide: Why not cut through all the hand-wringing and simplify things? The best way to know something's been done right is to do it yourself, and raising vegetables is often easier than keeping your lawn green. With minimal effort, you'll grow the most delicious produce you'll ever eat in your life. You'll also be enjoying the direct result of your own labor, a feeling that's almost entirely missing from our technology-flooded world. You put some seeds in the soil, water them, tend to them, and in ten weeks you're eating eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers that you've coaxed into the world yourself. That's a damn powerful feeling in these uncertain times. (Just ask the Obamas about their new White House garden.) And you needn't live on a farm deep in Vermont to pull it off: Innovative gardeners are growing lettuce on brick walls, using mirrors to raise veggies in the shadows of New York's tallest buildings, and pulling exquisite zucchini out of tiny Seattle backyards.

Cinque TerrePortland, Maine
In all of eating, there is no better idea than Lee Skawinski's: Apply the principles of small-town Italy to an American restaurant. On the nearby Grand View Farm (left), he grows Italian varietals (broccoli rabe, radicchio di Treviso, Chioggia beets) using seeds from www.seedsofItaly.com.